Time for a Cool Change

We do things one way for a long time. This is easily understood in our yoga practice. We press back into dog pose and there is a sameness about it. Thighs back, arms straight, blah blah. Manouso messes with us a lot in this regard showing us a zillion ways to do a pose. And also intentionally throwing in a prop or two that will throw the whole thing off balance. So now what are you going to do to find balance with a prop putting you into an uncomfortable place? 

Asana practice is a play ground for teaching us how to handle discomfort, impermanence/change. We have a large array of poses at our disposal but our pose repertoire has a lot of 'sameness' to it. Trikoasana, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Sirsasana, Urdvha Mukha Svanasana - poses done A LOT in a regular practice. The body is never the same so the pose is never the same. We bring beginner's mind to the mat each time we come into a pose. What will be here today? Can I let go of my expectations about how this pose should be based on what it was yesterday? Can I let go and just be with what is here? The tight hamstring. The injured shoulder. The sore  hips. The cluttered mind. 


This is how life is. Things get uncomfortable. We can handle the discomfort the same way as we always do with what Tara Brach would call a "false refuge." Oh, I am scared so I will shut down. Oh I am hurt so I will get defensive. Oh I am tired I am going to bail on my practice. And on it goes - different for all us but really the same.


Conscious change requires a fortitude to look ourselves in the eye. Those behavior grooves have been our friends for a long time and were put in place as a means of protection. At a certain point, however we realize there is a different way to be. A choiceless choice if we are seeking an authentic life. 


I just experienced some difficulty of the medical kind. I had to have a procedure that pushed a lot of my samskara buttons. And I watched the reactions happen. Fear, anxiety, and great aversion. A big pushing away and desire for things to be different. I didn't succeed clearly in NOT having those reactions. And believe me I experienced many an hour of being an anxious freaky girl about this whole thing. But, I did manage, with a lot of discomfort, to sit with all of it and get past the thing I needed to do. 


Part of what I realized in this process is acceptance and presence are not a pushing away - the tight hamstring or the mind that is feeling aversion - but it is to actually toward towards them and be in them. So yesterday while waiting for this thing to take place I breathed and felt and expressed the aversion but at the same time I was a witness to "this is aversion," This is Stefanie not being in the present moment where everything is ok," "this is Stefanie freaking out." And while that stuff kinda stunk - I managed to get through the day without lopping my own head off about how much I suck and managed a certain amount of presence through a difficult few hours.


baby steps on a big path. All I can ask for is a little light in the sky that keeps drawing me closer to awareness and presence. It has always been there. I guess I finally took off the sunglasses.